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Tomorrow Is November 1.

All kinds of riotous joy will break out at midnight, with the start of two of my favorite traditions: Art Every Day Month and NaNoJouMo. I am so excited I can hardly wait!! I’m reposting the original posts here, with links, so you can join in!!

[Leah Piken Kolidas] ” started this project over ten years ago as a challenge to myself to create some art every day for one month and post it on my blog. I was inspired by NaNoWriMo and wanted to do something similar with art, and thusArt Every Day Month(AEDM)was born. Posting art on my blog every day helped to keep me accountable and it was fun to share my creations. The following year, I invited people to join in and each year since I’ve had great groups of creative people committing themselves to more creativity for the month of November with me. I’ve met some fantabulous people through AEDM and I’m thrilled to have anyone who is interested join in!

The rules (which were made for breaking):

I keep the rules for AEDM really simple and very loose. I encourage people to make something every day, but my goal is to foster more creativity, so if you make just one piece of art per week or just one for the whole month, that’s fine with me. The idea is to bring more creativity into your life, not to make you feel overwhelmed, pressured or guilt-stricken. Art is also loosely defined here. I mean art in the sense of anything creative, whether that be painting, drawing, knitting, sewing, cooking, decorating, writing, photography, clay, jewelry-making or whatever!

Look at AEDM as a soft nudge to add more creativity to your everyday life with a bit of group support. It’s the group support that makes it so lovely I think. Every year, I meet new, wonderfully creative people through the process, which was an unexpected, but amazing benefit! Because my focus is on mixed media art, I tend to work on drawing, painting, and collage and I challenge myself complete a piece of art or do some work on a larger piece every day and post an image of what I’m working on, on my blog.

I keep a link to a list of bloggers participating this year in my sidebar, so that you can check in on what others are up to and I’ll have a Mr. Linky widget posted daily where people can leave a link to their blog posts. I’ve also created a Flickr group where people could share their creations (it’s free and fairly easy to use.) You can join up with the flickr group and post your images there if you’d like to, although it’s not required”.

“Once again, [Dawn DeVries Sokol is] planning on starting NaNoJouMo Nov. 1 and hope you will join me every day for a new prompt throughout the month. For the last couple of years, I have focused on song titles, and since music always moves me to journal, we’re going to focus on some favorites from my personal playlist. So get those art journals ready and if you’re not familiar with NaNoJouMo, read the post that started it all:

I was just contemplating my own version of NaNoWriMo. (For those of you unfamiliar with this term,NaNoWriMois held during the month of November, encouraging writers everywhere to write a 175-page novel by midnight, Nov. 30.) At first I thought of NaNoCroMo, where I would crochet a certain amount every day during November…I think I will try to do that, but I’m also starting NaNoJouMo, an idea borne out of a Twitter conversation between myself andPam McClungand brought to fruition here…It stands for National Nonstop Journaling Month!

Each day during November, I will post a word to get you art journaling. A journal jump of sorts—one word a day to inspire or get you thinking. The goal is to journal SOMETHING in your art journal.DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A FULL PAGE…can be a doodle, maybe painting some backgrounds, doing some collage…just SOMETHING every day in your art journal during November. Even if it’s just moving a pencil across the page in a crooked line…

Nothing earth-shattering.

You may say, “Dawn, WHY should I do this?”

Well, I know some of us (many, let’s be honest) have a difficult time getting started. Sometimes we just need a kick in the pants to encourage us.I also want you to learn how to journal a little at a time. Art journaling is an activity that can be done in spurts. You don’t have to create an entire page or spread in one sitting.I have pages in all stages of production! And it’s OK!

So get out that handmade journal, Moleskine, notepad, composition notebook, or whatever you’re using as your art journal right now. If you have several in the works, that’s OK, too! You can pick a different one each day! Just get ready to art journal!!!!”